Andrea Smith combines intellectual study, professional skill, and personal passion to shed light on violence against women of color in the USA. The violence comes from many corners of society, including family members, immigration officials, police, and employers. Andrea began her advocacy work as a rape crisis counselor with Chicago Women of All Red Nations. She co-founded INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, a national organization that uses direct action, dialogue, and grassroots organizing to end violence against women of color. Andrea teaches at the University of Michigan. She says: “It is futile to try to combat interpersonal violence without addressing the fact that we live in a world structured by violence”. (1000peacewomen).

Andrea Lee Smith is a Cherokee intellectual, feminist, and anti-violence activist. Smith’s work focuses on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women. A co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the Boarding School Healing Project, and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations, Smith centers the experiences of women of color in both her activism and her scholarship. She is currently a professor of American Culture and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI … (full text).

Listen her video: Andrea Smith: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, 76.30 min, 20 janv. 2007:
In this lecture, author, scholar, and activist Andrea Smith of INCITE! Women of Color against Violence discussed sexual violence in American Indian communities and the role of sexual violence in genocide. Smith argues hat sexual violence is an inherent part of the colonial project. She also asserts that sexual violence – as a weapon of both patriarchy and colonialism – must be approached from an anti-colonial perspective. Finally, she shares her thoughts on organizing against sexual violence and argues for a “mass movement” against sexual violence that exists outside of current non-profit structures.

Smith’s book sheds light on the inherently oppressive definitions of sexual violence, especially towards indigenous women. Sexual violence is a tool. It can be traced back to colonial times. It enforces the patriarchy and colonial goals, of exploration of the Native community … (full text, oct. 6, 2008).

Andrea Smith of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence spoke of these connections when she described how “hetereo [sexual] patriarchy is fundamental to empire because patriarchy is what naturalizes social hierarchy, the idea that men naturally rule over women, that elites naturally rule over everyone else. In the history of Indian genocide, the first task that colonists took on was to integrate patriarchy into native communities who wouldn’t accept colonial domination until native men started treating native women the way that white men treat women.” Smith noted that sexual violence against native women served as a “primary tool” for colonialism and white supremacy “by rendering women inherently rapable, our land inherently invadable and our resources inherently extractable” (radio feminista.net).

During the 19th and 20th centuries, American Indian and Alaska Native children were forcibly abducted from their homes to attend Christian boarding schools as a matter of government policy. Sexual, physical, and emotional violence was rampant in many of these schools. As a result of boarding school policies, there is now an epidemic of child sexual abuse in many Native communities. However, because of the shame attached to the abuse, there has been no forum to adequately address this problem. Consequently, child abuse passes from one generation to the next. This project is a starting point to address child sexual abuse. By framing abuse as the continuing effects of human rights abuses perpetrated by government policy, we hope to take the shame away from talking about the abuse and provide space for communities to address the problem and heal … (full text).

Andrea Smith, Noted Pro-”gay,” Pro-abortion Radical Feminist is approved by the local Newchurch Archbishop to deliver the principal address at his Catholic University’s “Social Issues Conference” Robert Brom, Newchurch Archbishop of San Diego, deceptively allowed a “Motu” Mess while at the same time personally participating in Newchurch’s great sex and embezzlement Ssandal Aathough its documents do not quite reflect it yet, Newchurch, by its acts, is clearly moving to a pro-abortion, pro-”gay” position in its New Morality. The examples of this post-conciliar shift in morality are rife in recent years. Here is yet another case in point … (full text Sept. 2007 on TRADITIO, scroll down to her picture).